Entries in moths
(8)

Just a quick note about our star attraction at the last Sussex Moth Group Hastings Branch meet up. We met at Hastings Garden Centre/Pebsham Marshes for a moth trapping event on Saturday 26 August. We had a good catch with 87 species, the star attraction being a Marsh Mallow Moth(Hydraecia osseola). After some discussion with both Colin Pratt (our county moth recorder), and Sean Clancy the man in charge of the conservation of this endangered moth, we are pretty sure we have an idea of what this means at this point. Although it would be fantastic to find a new colony, its likely either a wandering female looking for another good stand of Marsh Mallow(Althaea officinalis) food plant, or even possibly a migrant from Europe. We'll obviously have to wait and see if future records appear, but for now a nice find.

The Sussex Moth Group is hosting loads of great events for National Moth Night, which actually runs from today 3 July, 2014 to 5 July, 2014. The Hastings Branch is going to host one of the events at Brede High Woods Friday 4 July, 2014. We are meeting at 8:45pm at Brede High Wood car park (first one coming from Broad Oaks) [TQ 8042 2061]. The target species this year is Woodland moths, so we are sure to see some fantastic moths.

If you would like to come along and see some of the moths caught feel free to join us. We'll be mothing until around 00:30 and there are some spectacular species to be found.

On June 7th the Sussex Moth Group, Hastings Branch went back out to Guestling Wood run by the Woodland Trust, with an MV trap in addition to the two actinics we had on 25 May. The MV Trap was run by Gerry Balcikonis and his moth helper 8 year old Callum Sims. We had a great catch of 54 species and 326 moths counted. We had good numbers (12) Waved Carpet and also good number of Little Emerald (pictured below) which was new for me to see.

We look forward to running traps in the wood again at a different time of year, but the main reason I wanted to make this post was the outstanding job of Callum Sims. He has been coming along to our moth nights for two years and is a fantastic future naturalist. He helped with the counts and IDing and is very interested in nature. He informed me that he has on going studies of nature in his back garden and "Really loves nature!". When I worry that kids today are not interested in getting out in nature this reminds me that many of them just need a chance to get out and catch 'the bug'. Well done Callum, we look forward to having you again.

With the long weekend upon us, Roger Chisholm-Batten, a fellow member of the Sussex Moth Group, Hastings Branch, contacted me about going out for a bit of moth trapping on Sunday night, 25 May. We decided on Guestling Wood as I had never been there let alone could I find any moth records for the site.

We took two actinic traps on battery power and made our way down the path. We ran the traps until about midnight, as we ran out of pots and the rain threatened. On final count we had 46 species with 219 individuals counted. Surprisingly there are not any modern records for this wood and thus could have many interesting species in residence being an ancient woodland.

We were overrun with Lutestrings, both Common and Satin, along with good numbers of Pale Tussock and Ingrailed Clay. Some of the more notable species were Grey Birch, Square Spot, Pale Oak Beauty, and most interesting was Waved Carpet of which we had 3.

Waved Carpet, photo by Roger Chisholm-Batten

All in all it was a great moth trapping, and a start on a few modern records for Guestling Wood.